I use TomTom via Apple CarPlay and first and current year expires next month and had an email from Apple last week to remind me to cancel now if I don’t want the subscription to continue but at £19-99 I’m finding it well worth it.
Unlike my VW inbuilt car satnav it announces safety and red light cameras even when its not navigating, that for me is 90% of the time and can make these announcements even while using other car systems within the infotainment unit. The real big like for myself is seeing traffic hold ups clearly on the map, at a glance, miles ahead of me giving loads of time to avoid.
One and I think only bugbear is it does not allow you to go to a point on the map and touch that point and make that your destinations, something that my inbuilt VW satnav does without using names or postcodes, but again, I can use the VW map in those instances and navigation while TomTom gives me the warning over the car audio of any safety cameras ahead without using the TomTom navigation.
I could be wrong but I don’t think there would be an option for a free year via CarPlay.